"You do not support the root; the root supports you." (Barbara Kingsolver)

What is being grounded ?

First, I think toughness. A certain grit and grunt. Pull on your bootstraps and stand.
I was a pretty sensitive kid. Blown every which way. I'd endorse anything the least bit inspirational.

Once we had a preacher that would fall down on his knees. Sometimes cry. Sometimes make jokes. Kinda like T.V. People clapped at the end.

Our bulletins had note taking spaces where a few key sentences from the sermon were printed out with blanks for some of the words - you got to fill them in with the right words as the sermon went along. It was an intoxicating combination for a young, impressionable, idealistic, things are only black and white perfectionist list-maker (Going to church meant I could make sense of things with a fill in the blanks notecard?! yes, please). The only thing better would be if they also gave me a highlighter and an agenda book.

And so at eleven years old I began my crusade: bent on saving my siblings, my dad, my mom, and also the world.

It was a messy, ugly time for my family. I needed to believe in clean lines. But that meant I couldn't embrace the messiness of what it means to be a human. Couldn't accept it, couldn't love it; could only be scared of it because it didn't fit into the shape I had cut out for it (I studied my fill in the blank notecards).

Wasn't grounded in the reality of people and their tangled spectrums.
I had planted my feet in holy water and the cold made my toenail beds turn pink then purple then gray and the colors slid across my whole foot and chunked it into cement - too still and cold and hard to be alive and luckily I still remembered what it was like to be warm and pulsing. Luckily still wanted to be warm and pulsing. I stuck a tentative foot out and dried off and sat on the bank for a while with Huck just thinking.

"It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

'All right, then, I'll GO to hell' -- and tore it up." (Mark Twain)


Later,
-new people and place and I figured out that I stepped in that cold water because I mixed up Heaven and Hell - and maybe lots of people do,
new people and place and I figured out some people's holy water can be warm



I think being grounded is laughing at the mushrooms in your yard when you see them in the morning with perfect little chunks bitten out of them by the deer and then sometimes the whole top is bitten off and all that's left is a dorky white chomped on stem that's sticking bravely straight up in the air with little bits of mushroom around the base that probably fell out of the deer's mouth

"When St. Francis looked deeply at an almond tree in winter and asked it to speak to him about God, the tree was instantly covered with blossoms." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

wanna be so grounded that the toes I planted can taste the soil - creek water, mama's smile, blue eyes of sisters and brothers, Dad looks just like Robin Williams in Hook, children lock eyes with each other, easy smiles, and now a new place where I feel spindly woody roots growing like gnarled flowers on the side of a mountain - Boone      >>> these are the things I hope to keep my feet in, the things I hope to   come   from   when   I   be

be be be
              be  ing       very very very very very close to that edge - that edge that's defining - the only one

"this life cannot be lived apart from what it must forgive" (R Creeley)  richness in knowing you are of what is, and you are conscious of that and you're the

"universe's way of looking at itself"(Alan Watts)

being grounded --->   to be in the know that,   for our split second of here , when we can make the soil warm,                            the lightest of scrimmy veils is the difference between being alive and not being alive. Having time to spend and not having time to spend.

Awake Awake Awake (William Blake)

practicing gratitude - Day 2

Today I'm grateful for . . .

having a sister to fight with
watching my little brother fall in love
having a soft bed to lay down in, even if I think my Dad's cat might have peed somewhere nearby
drawing a line for myself and sticking to it, even if it means other people are disappointed



having places that are very hard to leave



                                                  you're         very dear Dear

practicing gratitude - DAY 1

I'm grateful for the way I could talk to my family on the phone today. Mel put it on speaker phone and it was her, my brother, and my mom in the car on the way home from visiting Grandma. We talked about Doug coming to visit and the silly nicknames that they had come up with for him.

My mom has this weird thing about making up nicknames for any of her children's significant others.
I get sincerely impressed with her creativity. The nicknames are most likely to be a hodgepodge of something or someone from her favorite soap opera, Days of Our Lives, combined with a physical trait of the boyfriend/girlfriend. Like it has become a veritable talent for her. She gets these really intense eyes  - squinty and teal and far away - when she's coming up with something because she's thinking so hard. She's a lot of fun.

I'm grateful for somebody telling me to lean in harder because there's no protecting yourself from the terrible feelings that happen when you lose someone, really lose someone (I think that feeling might be the most real feeling cuz it's the most "there's a bottom line" feeling) - soften lean into soften lean into soften lean into soften lean into soften lean into soften lean into soften lean into soften lean into soften lean into soften lean into soften lean into soften lean into soften lean into

coax a toe in and keep saying it

what the roots of the word "courage" actually mean: share your whole story with your whole self

"dress rehearsing tragedy doesn't protect you" - Brene Brown

Complicated relationships I used to think felt like a lack of wholeness. But that's not it. A lack of perfection yeah. But nobody wants perfection. Show me a perfectionist and I'll show you loneliness.

We want to sit across from each other and say honestly, yeah me too - and then smile, making our face skin swim with wrinkles and sagging -       maybe why we're here?  to be with each other

ser - to be - I am - here - to be - here- I am -     in now with you   >>>   woah

grateful for language - grateful for knowing that language doesn't cut it -